How Language Starts


Here is something I jotted down yesterday:
It’s 22:59 hours into the day. I have travelled only from home to Baby’s house, back to home, and one return journey to Plymouth. The sofa holds me in a comfortable scoop, while fire blazes in the wood burner. A faint crusted badge of Baby sick adorns my jumper. Her best trick today was dragging a flannel from the clothes airer to slap my face in a vigorous replication of the act of washing. Also, we have danced, so, whatever else has happened, the day has not been wasted. Baby babbles in sound, we don’t yet share a spoken language. When she is tired she rests on my lap, head lolling into the curve of my shoulder. A bubble of sick pops out. ‘Uh-oh,’ she smirks, eyes closing. 



Comments

  1. Mary Aalgaard5 April 2012 at 22:23

    Oh, sweet baby images. I think of language and how we can communicate without words.

    Play off the Page

    ReplyDelete
  2. MOV7 April 2012 at 01:21

    Hello Lily,

    Great post, I think I just found my new favorite blog. Love the way you write!

    I discovered your site through the A to Z Challenge and am now a follower, but not in a stalker-ish way with binoculars and night vision goggles or anything like that ….

    Feel free to take a peek at my blog too if you have time. I am writing with a travel theme:

    http://wordcut.blogspot.com

    best,
    MOV

    ReplyDelete
  3. Lisa Southard7 April 2012 at 10:47

    Thank you MOV, happy to entertain- I have visited both of your blogs, they are both brilliantly witty and well written, so I decided to follow both, also without night vision goggles (although they would be useful when playing the tooth fairy I think!) :-)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Thank you for reading my words- my chance to read yours here:

Popular posts from this blog

Corona Creep Up

Image
Words From The Start Of Lockdown Life Mr looks to the future, it looks like hedges. Saturday March 14th 2020 On the drive to work I got bored of changing the windscreen wiper settings, then a little off-white spider raced around on the steering wheel. I blew it onto the dashboard but it jumped back. Cheeky spider. At work we are bored of coronavirus restrictions and bored at the prospect of it continuing. We don’t know anyone who has it. Supermarket shelves are missing toilet roll, dried pasta, as previously, now also tins of beans and tomatoes. There are travel bans and cancelled events. Last night I had to teach a non contact TKD session - no pads, no sparring, no hand shaking. I began my class with ‘first of all, please don’t breathe because that’s dangerous now.’ All of us are ‘meh’ about these restrictions. We understand that infection control is serious for the immune-compromised, we adhere to protocol for that reason. But the paranoia and boredom: meh. Monday March
Read more

Fun And Thievery

Image
All day marvellous words pour through my head to describe the sounds, sights, and scents of nature. This morning a light frost was laid out for our delectation, harming no flowers, stilting no birdsong. I have energy to get gardening, to plan, to write the novel, but daily life is scarcely reported upon in spite of how it describes itself to me. We are tentatively out of lockdown, allowed to meet outside in socially distanced groups of up to 6. We are allowed to teach outdoors, numbers limited by space, keeping a 2 metre gap between students (unless they are a family bubble). At home we have the gazebo set up with a picnic bench to host outdoor socialising. Internally we are weary, we are tattered lace on spindly side tables. Every little bit of rest like this morning’s coffee in bed is held onto as though I am stockpiling loveliness in order to survive. I am writing this to help ease that mentality. I would like to adjust out of isolation, I would like to be a light frost thawing
Read more